On Jesus, bacon and such

Awhile back, I blogged about how very much I like my friend Sarah. And, because she is indeed just as awesome as I said she was, lookie what she sent me in the mail last week! Holy mother of fucking awesome!



You may have guessed that I'm not especially religious. Or Mexican. So this might seem like kind of an odd gift. But actually, it's absolutely perfect.

To put it in perspective, these are just a few of the similar items in the house. And I really have to emphasize just a few. I may not be crazy Jesus lady, but I sure collect like one.







Plus, did you see? The Day of the Dead skeletons are drinking!



Finally, my views on crochet are well known. It's not my thing, but it's fine if that's the kind of thing you enjoy. I don't mind. Not at all. Really, it's totally ok if you crochet. IF YOU WANT JESUS TO CRY. Ahem. Kidding. Anyway, Sarah may have proven me wrong.



Yup. It's crocheted BACON. I giggle everytime I look at it. And it's gonna fit right in around here.



Thank you so much, Sarah!

Betcha didn't know

I'm a sparkly fairy princess! Or at least I knit like one.



Basic stockinette sock. Berrocco Sox Metallic, in the "I'm a ten year old girl, let's trade puffy unicorn stickers" colorway. Or Color 1357, whatever. This has been a fast knit by my standards. Less than a week for the first leg. I'm completely enchanted by the colors, by the way the stripes aren't too perfect, by all the subtle gradations that can be achieved between pink and purple.



I also think this yarn would make a really fun scarf or shawl, if that's the kind of thing you're into. No judgment.

My only concerns so far are that the yarn seems a bit scratchy, and my ribbing looks like complete ass. My ribbing never looks great, but this is sort of ridiculous.



See? Ass.

Even the stockinette part is knitting up kind of, well, sloppy. And yes, I am choosing to blame this on the yarn. Hopefully it will even out after a good blocking. But for now! So pink! So sparkly!

And on a less girly note, I'm also considering joining the Knitting Olympics. Top project contenders include:

Endpaper Mitts: I have the yarn, and I haven't done any colorwork in ages. Problem: requires DPNs, and I know there will be unattractive laddering issues. Don't bother suggesting two circs or magic loop. That is not how I roll.

Just Enough Ruffles: 400 yards of cashmere in the stash. Plus, a chance to do battle with my nemesis, the "wrap and turn."

Rococo Socks: Pretty. And an excuse to buy the pattern.

Lenore: Dead sexy. Plus, I have two different skeins of Raven Clan STR calling my name, AND I already have the pattern.

We Call Them Pirates: The reasons should be obvious.

Extermiknit: Would make an excellent gift for many of the geeks in my life.

Pyroclastic: A damn fine-looking sock, plus a chance to try a new heel technique.

Technique-wise, none of these should be a huge challenge, but it will be a challenge for me to complete them in the allotted time, given how slow the knitting has been lately.

I'm leaning towards Just Enough Ruffles or Lenore, but the other patterns have much to recommend them.

Any other Olympians out there? What are you knitting?

Finding what fits

Alternately titled: Yet more navel-gazing, now with bonus socks!



I was bitching about my job recently, as I do on (ahem) very rare occasions.

Now, I'm a systems analyst for a multi-national consulting company, and I've worked for them for 7 of the last 10 years. Yet somehow, I've never thought of this as The Job I Am Meant to Have. I should be a writer, or a cook, or an activist, or a ninja or, dear god, anything but a systems analyst.

I even got a masters degree in NOT BEING A SYSTEMS ANALYST.

BFF Quinn, the lucky recipient of my complaints, suggested I might want to let go of this sense of what I "should" be. It seemed like I was rejecting my job not because it actually sucked, but because the idea of it sucked. And my aversion to thinking of myself as a systems analyst was clearly getting in the way of enjoying what was actually good about my job.



Frankly, I was stunned. What if I embraced this whole systems analyst thing? What if I just thought of this job as something I was really good at and even - gasp! - could enjoy? What if I can make a decent living and still laugh every time I hear the word 'caulk', still say fuck way too often, and finish the bottle of wine way more than I should? I'd just be a foul-mouthed, tipsy systems analyst with a juvenile sense of humor. So, um, exactly the person I've been for most of the last ten years.

And that doesn't mean I can't still be a writer, and a cook, and all those other interesting things (shut UP, I so could too be a ninja). It just means I'd fully engage with my job and start considering it an actual career. i.e., I hear there's this thing called "networking" that people do. And that people sometimes seek out promotions and such because that's how you advance in your chosen career. Crazy!



The best part is, this is a lesson I should have already learned from knitting. I knit because I enjoy it, and mostly I don't worry about whether there is Knitting I Should Be Doing. Like making something more complicated, or something that isn't a tiny sock, or learning a new skill, or knitting for charity, or whatever. Knitting doesn't have to be anything more than something I like and am (occasionally) pretty good at.

Which brings me to my latest pair of socks. I've knit better, more complicated, and prettier socks. I've actually knit this pattern before, so I'm not even trying anything new. But these socks are the most me of anything I've ever made.



Charade. Knitpicks Superwash Bare Tweed, Koolaid-dyed by me (with a treasure-trove of lime green Koolaid from Double Helix). Size 2 Harmony wooden DPNs. Modifications: 72 stitch cast-on, garter and eye of partridge heel. Fucking fantastic.



Lime green hand-knit tweed socks. It doesn't get any better than that. For me.

And it doesn't need to, either.

There's no place like the last place I lived

I know I've posted about this before, but bear with me...

I've spent roughly a third of my life in three places: Arizona, southern Oregon and Massachusetts. Now I've started a new chapter here in California. And I'm still not sure which, if any, of these places is home.

Of all the places I lived, I always said I liked New England the least. So I was mighty surprised to find myself referring to Boston as "back home" recently. It didn't even feel like home when I lived there, so why, after spending a week in Arizona with my mom, chatting with a transplanted Cape Codder, on a shuttle back to my Oakland apartment, was Boston, suddenly, "home"?

Up until September, Boston was the only place I've really lived as an adult. I had my first grown-up job there, rented my first apartment, shacked up with a guy, learned how to cook and knit and unraveled the arcana of library science. I still have a lot of really good friends there.

So does all of that make it home?

When I was in Arizona, the food, the Spanish street names, the astonishing spread of the sky overhead, the adobe houses and javelinas, horned toads and gila monsters: it was all so familiar and somehow right.

But does familiar make it home?

And then there's Oregon. Where I exchanged ardent and anguished love letters with a boy I'd known since seventh grade. The place where I smoked my first cigarette and pierced my nose. Where I wore shitkicker boots and ripped jeans and bewailed the tedium of small-town life in an endless series of coffee shops. The place where my father died.

But does that history make it home?

And what of California? Will it take another ten years, and moving to yet another state, for me to call it home?

I say no, damnit. I will not be writing maudlin blog posts ten years from now about how California never felt like home. I hereby resolve to explore and fully enjoy my new home.

First on my to-do list? Finding good steamed pork buns in Oakland.

What? Everyone has their priorities.

I like Sarahland

I've been thinking about my friend Sarah a lot recently, and I thought I'd share just a few of the ways in which she's fantastic.

First of all, she's whip-smart, funny and pleasingly neurotic. Further, she has excellent and adventurous taste in food, and a keen appreciation for both Joss Wheedon's entire oeuvre and the wankability of Alton Brown.

Despite her continuing and willful refusal to knit socks, she is actually a fine and eclectic knitter. From silk scarves to toy chickens to fair-isle mitts, her knitting is varied, lovely and a genuine pleasure to watch roll off the (circular) needles.

Further, she has an appreciation for and deft hand with googly eyes, the likes of which I have never seen.

She also has feet that I hope will be really, really happy in these socks.



And finally, in case there's any doubt about just how likeable Sarah is: these mother#&%@ing socks fit me beautifully.



I can only hope that she'll enjoy them as much as I do. And perhaps she'll be inspired to make some of her own some day...

And this is why I stash

I think non-knitters have trouble with the stash concept. To non-knitters, having yarn and not knitting it means you do not like that yarn.

If a non-knitter gifted that yarn to a knitter, it might seem like the knitter doesn't really like the yarn at all. For example, a particular friend of mine just can't understand why I would ignore the 400 yards of gorgeous cashmere he gave me. He thinks I don't like the cashmere.

Knitters know not liking cashmere is impossible. But I do think there are several factors at work in the stashing and project selection process.

1. Non-knitters don't really understand just how much yarn some of us actually have. There is more yarn in my stash than I could possibly knit in the foreseeable future. Not knitting a particular yarn is, admittedly, at least partially due to the fact that I am a fickle, fickle tramp when it comes to new yarn. But it's also due to the sheer amount of other yarn in the stash. I don't really knit all that much, and I have a shitload of yarn. Therefore, the backlog is substantial.



Monkey, in Fiber Confections hand-dyed merino. Stashed December 2008. Project started July 2009.

2. Sometimes I don't knit precisely because I love the yarn so much. I am waiting for the perfect project that will best complement a particularly gorgeous yarn. Such is the case with my cashmere stash. And honestly, I think some sock yarns are prettier in the skein than they could ever be knit up.



Auracania Ranco, Multy. Yarn stashed April 2008. Unknit.

3. The stash is a constant source of joy and inspiration. I browse my stash the way I browse cookbooks, to remind me of all the possibilities that are out there. And because it just makes me happy. I may not knit something immediately, but visiting my stash reminds me what I could be knitting with. And as I browse patterns, I mentally align pattern to stash, and every now and then there is a spark. The perfect alignment of pattern and yarn and (this is crucial) the desire to knit this particular pattern in this particular yarn immediately.



Chevron Scarf, in J Knits Superwash Me Light Sock, Reno and Colorado colorways. Stashed March 2007. Project started September 2009.

4. Sometimes I just want to knit and not think. I keep self-striping sock yarn on hand for just that urge. A stockinette sock is soothing, like a glass of wine (or three) or a long hot shower. It doesn't challenge me, I don't have to think about how it's going to turn out (cough *toosmall* cough), I don't even need to read a pattern.



Uh, some kind of striping yarn. Maybe Trekking? Meilenweit Megaboots? Purchased at some point, somewhere.

My stash is not just for those rare occasions, when I look at the yarn and know exactly what it must become. Though that is nice. I stash because I like knowing I have something easy to knit. I stash because yarn is beautiful and because it gives me pleasure to look at it and touch it and imagine what it could become.

Also, because I can't pass up nice tweed when it's on sale, but that's another matter entirely.

How about you? Why do you stash? Are you saving up anything particularly juicy?

Things I love about California

1. Kelley and Quinn

When my friend Kelley moved from Boston to the Bay Area last year, she (cruelly) sent me a picture of her and BFF Quinn, with the comment "There's someone missing from this picture."

Looking back, that was probably the first moment I seriously considered moving. It took another three months and a particularly vile New England ice storm to finalize my decision. I can say I moved for a better climate, for the amazing local food scene, for a more relaxed vibe, whatever. In the end, my friends were a huge part of why I moved.

2. There are flowers. In the middle of OCTOBER. And crazy Dr. Seuss-looking shit growing everywhere.







3. You can buy booze everywhere, every day of the week, at any time. I still find this so exciting that I refuse to buy booze at an actual liquor store. This is clearly less exciting to everyone else who lives here, because thus far I'm the only one I've seen at CVS buying beer, vodka, gum and tampons.



4. The Farmer's Markets. Dear god.





5. Vosges Bacon Chocolate bars. This has nothing to do with California, except that my local grocery store sells both the milk and dark chocolate varieties. And they are AWESOME.



Plus, their cheese section looks like this:



Oh yeah, did I mention I'm in California?

Yep, I am now a proud resident of Oakland, California in a neighborhood that rates quite highly on the awesomeness scale. Everything I need to be happy in a four block radius: the public library, used bookstores, video stores, a comic shop, bars (in my two favorite flavors: "filthy dive" and "tiki"), a movie theater, a half dozen coffee shops and - get this - a yarn shop.

There's even a weekly knitting group that meets every Saturday, at the library! Which I heard about from my next-door neighbor, who's also a knitter.

Add in fantastic friends who put me up while I was apartment hunting and who ferried me on countless shopping excursions and moved piles and piles of boxes and offered their husbands up for shelf assembly/electronics hook-up duties, and you've got a pretty painless cross-country move. As these things go.

I've even been doing some knitting. But more on that later.